


Enigma

by Lady_Harken



Category: Gundam Build Fighters
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-12
Updated: 2015-10-12
Packaged: 2018-04-26 02:38:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4986895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Harken/pseuds/Lady_Harken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nils sometimes has trouble figuring Caroline out and given the chance, decides to ask for some advice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Enigma

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Moon_Blitz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moon_Blitz/gifts).



With Yajima's funding and all the PPSE technology available, restarting the whole Gunpla Battle scene was going great. The construction of the new arena was well underway, and there were talks of building specific laboratories Nils could use to research the Plavsky particles. For now, they were using PPSE's old premises; all the research staff Yajima had acquired when buying PPSE's stock had proven to be great investment as well, and Nils couldn't be more pleased with how things were going.

The priority of the labs was Gunpla Battle for now, but Nils didn't mind, considering he had found himself quite loving the battles himself. The current battle system that they had under final tests was meant for the arena, and it was important it would suit world-level battles. For this purpose they had brought in Meijin Kawaguchi the Third himself as the main tester for fine-tuning the system, on the basis that if the best player they had available was satisfied with it, then it had to be perfect.

The Works Team was busy around the system; Nils himself was following everything from a monitor showing all the main details regarding to how the particles reacted. So far everything looked good, and he was expecting it to go perfectly - except for the part where his phone played an alert sound, and he sighed. He could well guess what it was - another odd message from Caroline.

Nils had, many months ago, accepted the fact that Caroline did as she pleased, and if she declared they were engaged, so be it. It wasn't like he really objected anyway. He liked her; even he realized that much. Being a genius meant he sometimes really didn't understand the way people of his own age thought and acted. He tended to be rather restrained with his feelings, but even he had come to the terms with the fact that she liked him, and he liked her back. How they had gone from her being his sponsor's daughter to the whole fiancé business was another thing, but Nils smiled at the memory of what had happened last year. Honestly, Caroline was too much for him to handle, but that was one of her charming points.

He had learned to understand her, more or less. More or less indeed, he thought as he picked up his phone to look at it. As expected, it was Caroline. The message itself was simply her feeling the need to tell him that the science class was boring, and she would've so much preferred being with him. Nils wondered about that; the fine-tuning the ex-PPSE now Yajima Works Team was doing for the Gunpla Battle System was far from something that girls of Caroline's age usually found interesting.

It just happened that this kind of a message was nothing new, and Caroline had the the habit of sending him several seemingly irrelevant messages while at school, and meanwhile Nils was starting to think this was causing him to waste a lot of time trying to analyze the meaning of the messages. He had done a little bit of research and found that it was common for teenagers to spend their time using their mobile devices to communicate like this. It was nothing new; the trend had started a couple of decades ago and was still ongoing, what with the net and easy communication, not to mention the devices had gotten more advanced.

Why all this was beyond him, though. If Caroline really had something important, she usually called - all right, half the time she called it wasn't important and she just said she "wanted to see him" or something. All about the teenager communication thing, Nils had found after researching enough net message boards and such, although said communities tended to be filled with teenagers and Nils just didn't get them. Talking about gunpla and Gunpla Battle online was one thing - this, not so much.

These messages still made no sense, and he sighed. The idea that maybe someone here knew how teenagers worked occurred to him, and he caught the sight of Meijin Kawaguchi from the corner of his eye. He was currently chatting with the Works Team chief, but as he stepped back and left Chief Adams and his team do their fine-tuning, Nils took a step closer.

"Oh, Meijin," he called to him. "You don't happen to you have a moment? There's... Ah. Something I'd like to ask you."

"Definitely," Kawaguchi replied with a hint of a smile. "What can I do for you, Mr. Nielsen? I saw the new arena, by the way. It looks quite amazing."

Nils gestured towards a resting area with a couple of chairs, and they sat down. "Why, thank you. I had a bit of say as to what they're doing with it, and I'm quite happy with how it's coming along. With this battle system, it'll be just as good as the last arena. Better, even. I've still got ways to go figuring out everything about the particles, though, but I doubt you're interested in that. You prefer the fighting part, huh, Meijin?"

Kawaguchi laughed a little. "You got me there. I'll leave the particles to you scientists and just stick to building gunpla and battling." He removed his sunglasses and smiled. "Also, while I'm not working, we could probably drop the Meijin stuff. We know each other anyway, so you could call me Tatsuya."

"Certainly," Nils agreed. "You don't have to call me Mr. Nielsen either, in that case. Outside the professional stuff... Well." He chuckled. "Sei Iori ended up being right. I have a passion for studying these particles, but I really do love gunpla too."

"Well in that case, want to try a Gunpla Battle later?" Tatsuya suggested. "We never got to fight each other back in the World Tournament last year, and I'd dare to suspect that you've gotten better since then. Would be a worthy maiden battle for this fine system. Besides, what's a better way to tell if it's ready for World Tournament level battles, than having two fighters from last year's best eight going at it."

As calm and collected and professional as he preferred to be, that idea brought an excited grin to Nils' face. "I'd love to! You're quite correct, too. I've been studying how to make better use of these particles since the last tournament, and I just might be a worthy opponent even for the Meijin himself. You might want to prepare yourself..." He caught himself at that point and cleared his throat. "Ah. That's not what I... Hmm. Mei... I mean. Tatsuya. That question I had."

Tatsuya nodded his head a little. "If it's anything I might be able to help with. Go ahead?"

"Well it's," Nils paused and sighed. "A little more personal thing, actually. But you... You went through normal education and high school, right?" Tatsuya nodded, and Nils dug up his phone and held up the last message for Tatsuya to see. "This. When you were my age, did you ever get weird messages like this?"

The expression of Tatsuya's face turned a little thoughtful. "I could say yes," he pondered, studying the message. "Looks quite normal to me. That's from Ms. Yajima, isn't it? And here I thought you two are dating, so I'm not exactly sure why you would find it odd in any way?"

"Ah, that's not it," Nils explained. "It's just that she sends me a lot of these. I have managed to crack the code of what all these happy faces and silly decorations mean in messages..." At this point Tatsuya seemed somehow amused, but Nils paid no heed to it. "The messages themselves are mostly of completely mundane subjects, like what they have in class today, what there was for lunch, pictures of birds sitting on the tree outside the classroom window, the fact that her teacher had a completely ridiculous tie, things like that. I feel like something I spent too much time staring at these and trying to figure out what this means."

Tatsuya shook his head. "Oh dear," he said. "So that's what it is. I'm not sure if I ever acted much like usual teenagers myself, but I can tell you this much," he advised, and Nils nodded a little. "These messages? They mean absolutely nothing serious and you shouldn't think about it that deeply. She just wants an excuse to message you, for no reason whatsoever. In a way, she wants to make you part of her day. If that makes sense."

Nils looked confused. "But, no reason? Then why would she..."

"Because she likes you," Tatsuya explained. "That's all that's needed. This is how people your age usual think. I take it you don't think like that?" He gave Nils a somehow understanding smile. "Now, then, have you ever thought about replying?"

"Well," Nils said. "I write some replies. Mostly to question how such a thing is relevant to the subject in hand or such. She sometimes gets a little mad and calls me to demand an apology. I..." He trailed off. "So I don't reply most of the time. Miss Caroline is quite a thing to handle if she gets mad," he explained, laughing a little.

"That's because you're approaching it the wrong way," Tatsuya pondered. "Instead of thinking about what the actual message is supposed to mean, you could reply something short and... Well, irrelevant might be a good word. Like 'that's too bad, I hope the next lecture is more interesting' or 'cute bird picture'. Or hey, you could start snapping random pictures of the your work and send those to her as a reply, if she's asking what you're doing. Experiment a little!"

"But that," Nils replied. "Sounds like something that idiotic teenagers would..." He paused and blinked. "...Wait."

Tatsuya laughed. "Exactly my point. I know it might be difficult for you, but stop thinking like a professional adult all the time and allow yourself to get excited over something pointless and silly once in a while. I think she'd like that too."

"I'll... hmm." Nils stared at the message. This was starting to make more sense than he'd thought.

"Oh, Meijin?" Allan Adams called from the Battle System's direction. "Mr. Nielsen," he added when noticing Nils. "The adjustments you asked about are done, Meijin. We could run the beam weapon test again. I'd dare to say this should be to your liking now."

Tatsuya put his sunglasses back on. "Give it some thought. You might be a child genius, but Ms. Yajima is a teenager, and I think she really wouldn't mind it if you tried to think and act like one once in a while."

"I'll... try," Nils replied. "Thank you for the advice. And we're definitely having that Gunpla Battle later," he added. Meijin Kawaguchi grinned and returned to the battle system, and Nils watched them restart the test then raised his phone and smiled.

Caroline would definitely want to hear about this upcoming Gunpla Battle, so he might just as well write a message and tell her about it, right?

**End.**

**Author's Note:**

> It's not easy being a genius, is it, Nils.
> 
> What can I say, I love Gundam Build Fighters. Been wanting to write something about Caroline and Nils for a good while, so here we go!


End file.
